I want to acknowledge the 25th anniversary of 9/11. The event divides the timeline of those of us who came of age before the attack. The 20 years preceding it seem more innocent and naive. The image of the falling Twin Towers defined us for the next twenty years and kicked off a century of unrest and discontent in the American psyche.
We’ve been embroiled in some war for almost the entire time. We’ve gone from a nation that celebrated the melting pot to one demanding a wall. The man who was America’s mayor on 9/11 ended his career in a parking lot of a landscaping company, making false accusations about a stolen election. Much of the division in the country today seems to stem from a singular event that shook us to the core.
Those who came of age after 9/11 have never known a world at peace and have lived in almost constant transition. They grew up with phones we couldn’t even imagine in 2001. Social media gave them a warped sense of truth and reality, though they are probably less susceptible to distortions than many of us who knew a world before them. They went through the Great Recession, the pandemic, and Donald Trump—twice. They’ve never experienced stability.
They did not have to live in such a world. The aftermath of 9/11 was our country’s great missed opportunity. Never have I felt more American or more unified than in the weeks immediately following the attack. For a fleeting moment, George Bush seemed to be the right leader for the times. His speech at Ground Zero brought a wounded nation together. He offered us hope for the future. And then he spoiled it by invading Iraq in a cynical and naive attempt to remake the Middle East.
This first quarter of the 21st century has been difficult, and it feels like 9/11 started it. I hope that in the next 25 years, we can reconcile our divisions and learn lessons, not just from the attack, but from the aftermath, too. We need a period of healing and reconciliation. We owe the generation that came of age after 9/11 some stability.
PSA for voters in NC.
One year ago this week, the NC State Board of Elections made a deal that forced nearly 100,000 registered voters to re-prove their eligibility to ensure their ballots are counted, despite those voters having done nothing wrong when registering. The settlement followed a drawn-out legal challenge to State Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs’ election.
There are still over 60K voters on this Registration Repair list. Please check to see if you are on the list using the search tool (link below). The Board of Elections mailed out letters, but many people discarded the letter since so much spam masquerades as "official" mail.
The search tool can be found here: https://dl.ncsbe.gov/RegistrationRepair/index.html. The list can be filtered by county and is searchable by name, so you can easily check to see if you, your family members or friends are on the list.
If you are on the list, there are three options to fix your registration:
➡️Online: through the DMV (log in or continue as guest) - https://login.payitgov.com/6058b257baf5316f664f6da41cfce114/en (ignore the payment part in the webpage name; there is no charge)
➡️By mail: if you received a letter in the mail from your County Board of Elections fill it out and send it back in; find your County BoE using this lookup tool (https://vt.ncsbe.gov/BOEInfo/)
➡️In person: by going to your County Board of Elections office
If we owe them anything, we certainly owe them that.